8. Alexei
Alexei
Battling my own conscience, I leave Ofelia on the bed and open the bedroom door a crack, unsure whether I want an excuse to leave or one to stay.
Bullshit, Alexei.
I know exactly what I want, and so does my throbbing, achingly hard cock.
She’s lying on the bed behind me, dress tangled around her hips, wet and glistening from her recent orgasm, and so clearly ready for more that I can barely think of anything except how good it would feel to bring her back to the brink with my mouth, then sink inside her until the world disappears.
The main salon is still silent, doors to the various bedrooms gaping open to reveal half-opened bags and turned-down beds.
Thank Christ for that.
I glance behind me to find Ofelia on her side, watching me. Her lips are still slightly parted, one hand curled on the pillow beside her flushed face, her blue eyes wide with questions I don’t have the answers to.
But we both know you’d love to try answering some of them, you piece of shit.
Thankfully, just before my extremely hard cock defeats my far less solid good intentions, the numbers above the elevator door light up. Clubbing is clearly about to give way to one of Lars’s notorious after-parties.
Not trusting myself to look back at Ofelia again, I close the door quietly behind me.
I cross the floor to the bar barefoot, willing my cock to go down as I down a straight shot of vodka, then another.
I’m pouring a third, my back turned to the elevator, and have only barely regained control of myself when the doors slide open and a raucous mass of bodies spills into the room.
“Motherfucker!” Lars’s exuberant tone hits me a moment before his lanky body bowls into mine, spilling my shot and almost knocking me over as he wraps an arm loosely around my shoulders and kisses my head roundly. “Why the hell are you drinking alone instead of with us?”
Bracing myself, I turn, attempting to grin at the extremely disheveled group.
“Didn’t want to leave Ofelia alone. Don’t lose your shit, Mickey,” I add, seeing his expression darken.
“Your sister went to bed just after we got back.” I nod at her closed door, grateful that years of lying to the Orlovs have honed my abilities to smooth perfection.
I don’t mention that the only reason she made it to bed at all is because I carried her there after she fell asleep against me on the sofa.
Nor that despite being dead to the world, she clung to me like a limpet when I tried to lay her down in bed, making a noise when I attempted to break away that both broke my heart and made it pound at the same time.
Oh, so it was your heart that was pounding, was it, asshole?
I told myself I would just lie beside her until she calmed.
I certainly didn’t mean to fall asleep.
Or wake to find her body sprawled across mine and my hand gripping her bare leg, my fingers so high that I could feel the heat and need emanating from her.
Fuck.
I turn back to the vodka before Mickey sees that I’m a lying bastard.
Lars’s extremely bloodshot eyes are a little less easy to fool.
They settle on me, narrowing slightly, but apart from the faintest twitch at the edge of his mouth, he doesn’t say anything as he reaches for the stereo and starts to turn it up.
“Keep it down,” I say, nodding toward Ofelia’s door. “I’ll shut the divider. And keep the party on your side, will you?”
“Hey,” Benny protests as I head toward my door, which is one of three on Ofelia’s side of the electronic divider. “Stay, Pirate Boy! Party with us.”
“Si.” Lourdes nods, her eyes sparkling. “It is just starting, no?” Her increased accent is the only evidence of her alcohol consumption. She’s wearing Mickey’s suit jacket over her dress, and despite the thread of dawn lighting the sky, looks remarkably fresh.
Spaniards. I’ve never met one yet who can’t party all night without any visible effect.
“Not for me, it isn’t.” I yawn, heading toward my room.
“I was just waiting until you made it home before heading to bed myself. Oh, for fuck’s sake, Mickey,” I say, when his frown deepens “I gave Ofelia the only free room in the suite, and I’m not moving from mine to another one just to satisfy whatever Victorian rules of propriety are going on in your head, especially when you will all likely be drinking for hours.
Make sure he gets some sleep,” I say, turning to Lars and nodding in Mickey’s direction.
“I imagine his father will expect to see us all at some point today.” I go through the divider and hit the button to close it without looking back, almost sagging with relief when nobody challenges me.
Fuck. I only realize I’m missing some of my clothes when I close the door on my silent, empty room.
Hopefully, if Mickey noticed at all, he assumed that my shoes and jacket are in my room, rather than scattered over Ofelia’s floor.
Despite jet lag, the intensity of the last few days, and the growing dawn, I’m wide awake and wired to hell. Not to mention acutely aware of Ofelia’s exquisite body laid out like a feast on the bed on the other side of the adjoining door between her room and mine.
The adjoining door that I definitely didn’t mention in my reassurances to her brother.
If Mickey knew about that, I’m pretty sure he’d have me forcibly removed from my room, even if it meant me sleeping on the fucking sofa.
Let alone what he’d do if he had any idea how close I just came to deflowering his sister.
Christ.
My entire body restless, I cross the room to the window, staring absently down at the early-morning street sweeper and willing my savage lust to subside. I can’t remember ever having it this badly. I can barely think for the taste and scent of her lingering on my skin.
Ofelia is a virgin.
Who the hell is still a virgin at twenty-two? After living in London, then Paris, for Chrissakes?
Except that I already know the answer.
Suddenly I’m standing back in that Granada courtyard, Ofelia’s pain-filled eyes locked on mine, her whisper hot on my skin. “Torture has been getting to twenty-one without ever being kissed . . .”
Oh, yeah.
I fucking knew, all right.
Or was it more that you hoped, you piece of shit?
I’ve tried not to think about it. To distract myself from the inevitable, maddening train of thought started by that one lone comment.
Tried not to wonder if she’d found someone else to kiss, or worse, to touch the places my knife once marked as my own.
I’ve fucked a thousand women trying to forget how her mouth felt under mine, to convince myself that her words were nothing more than a teenage dream, one she surely must have given up on by now.
But even if I’ve spent most of the last six years telling myself that I want Ofelia to find someone, I’m honest enough to know that the thought of any man putting his hands on her long, lithe limbs, on the parts of her I was forced to mark with my blade, makes me want to take out that same knife and carve the bastard up.
And if I’ve been haunted by the memory of her body under my hands for years, now those dreams will be edged with the recollection of her taste and scent.
Torture, she called the years without being kissed.
She has no idea what kind of torture it is to know she’s lying barely meters from where I’m standing, her body still wet and swollen from my mouth, my cock pulsing at the thought of slowly waking her with it again, so she’s gasping before she’s even conscious . . .
Torture is entirely inadequate to describe that temptation.
I’d call it fucking obsession.
Let’s face it. If I was any kind of honorable man, I’d already be on a flight out of here. I could have told security to watch over Ofelia. Could have already been gone.
Instead, I leaped at the very first opportunity to do the one thing I’ve been promising myself for years I would never do.
But you haven’t completely ruined everything. Not yet.
She can still find someone else. Go to him untouched, or at least as far as he would know.
Oh, really, Alexei? And you’d just stand aside and let another man take her, would you?
Cursing my own weakness, I crack the adjoining door open a fraction.
I’m not sure if I’m relieved or disappointed to find Ofelia’s eyes closed, her breathing deep and even.
For a moment my eyes linger on the long leg stretched down, the other hitched up, the chiffon of her dress only just covering the delicious swell of her ass and the even more tempting shadow beneath it.
Don’t even fucking think about it, asshole.
I’ve done more than enough damage for one night. For a lifetime, if it comes to that.
I close the door before my cock gets the better of my brain for the second time in one night and pour another straight shot from the bottle on the dresser.
Crossing back to the window, I gulp the shot, bitterly aware I’ve got fuck-all chance of getting any sleep unless I take a freezing cold shower then drink myself into a stupor.
I grip the window frame and stare down at the street sweeper, then suddenly tense.
Europe might do things differently than Miami.
But even in France, and especially in Paris, it’s pretty rare to see someone using an actual broom to sweep a wide, easily accessible street.
Especially when they’ve been sweeping the same part of it for the last fifteen minutes.
“Mickey.”
To the kid’s credit, when I come through the divider it only takes one look at my face and he’s on his feet, if a little unsteadily, and at my side.
“There’s something off in the street,” I say, out of earshot of the others.
Lars is shooting us a sideways look, but he knows better than to get involved in this part of our business.
Instead, he keeps Benny and Lourdes distracted, telling them some outlandish story involving a famous actor that has them both fascinated enough not to pay attention as Mickey and I discreetly retreat to my room.
“Have a look.” I stand aside, and Mickey peers down.
“The street sweeper?”